EDI-LCY//LTN-KTW-LTN-EDI

http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwy...7605375653693/ - photography abandoned on the Wizz Air flight

I’ve always fancied going to Poland – going back to the days when you simply couldn’t – and with the current numbers of Polish migrant workers in the UK there is a healthy range of flights to choose from. I thought a bank holiday weekend in Krakow with my London based friend would work well. Now, ordinarily I would have flown directly from Edinburgh to Krakow, but in the interests of chivalry I had to fly from London with my friend, and do so cheaply. To achieve this, we found an airline called Wizz Air which flew to Katowice-Krakow and which would operate a shuttle bus to meet us and take us into Krakow. To get to LTN, I opted to fly BA into LCY and then travel by trains to LTN. On the way back, flight times pointed to an Easyjet flight from LTN-EDI – there simply wasn’t time to get to a proper airport for a proper flight. I was deeply uneasy about the arrangements, but went along with it.

And the EDI-LCY leg was very good indeed. My BA gold card got me into the lounge for a healthy sandwich & twiglet lunch before boarding the plane and sitting ion my pre-allocated 1F. After a lovely flight with clear views over the city and up the Thames, I ventured to the new DLR link to Bank; then the Northern Line to St Pancreas. Now, at this point, I had been tipped off to a local scam. Apparently they will try to sell you a ticket to Luton Airport Parkway – actually what you need is a ticket to Luton Airport. I made sure I had the right ticket and got on the train. On arrival at Luton Airport Parkway, I was allowed to join the queue for the bus. Most of my fellow passengers had fallen for the scam and had to pay a small bribe (£1) to the peaked-cap who obviously made quite a living from this.

Anyway, the bus eventually arrived in purple splendour and took us through the maze of roundabouts – and there before us was Lutonscum Airport. Its most distinctive feature was a huge orange EasyJet warehouse. There was a separate SilverJet terminal which might have been less grim than the rest of the airport, but since they folded a week later I guess I’ll never know. The main airport was the pits. It was dark, dingy, full of drunks and screaming kids. The only seats were at the various shops and cafes – think Burger King rather than oyster bars – and bottles of water were well over a pound. Interestingly, though, they could be had free with a 60p newspaper.

After an age, we were allowed to check in. Hand luggage only, since Wizz Air charges you extra for hold luggage. They had one desk open for the flight, which had a different number to the desk shown on the screen. Fortunately, we were quite quick on picking this up – others were less lucky and were condemned to a long, long wait. We were given boarding passes and told the plane had “free seating”. It certainly wasn’t free – like most of these low cost airlines, their tickets were surprisingly expensive. Anyway, my friend told me that the airport was much nicer when you got through security.

It wasn’t.

We arrived into a bedlam shopping centre packed to the rafters with young, drunk English people. There was not enough seating, so people were slouched all over the floor or milling around aimlessly in the many dreary shops. We decided to find somewhere nice to eat – failed – and ate instead in a café done up in dayglo colours with constantly changing mood lighting. The chairs had metal legs that grated on the concrete floor, and nobody in the place was capable of lifting a chair or sitting still. Thence to a bar full of stag parties. Eventually, with only an hour left to wait, we discovered our flight would be delayed for 90 minutes. Our hearts sank. It also meant that we would arrive in Poland not at 2330, but at 0100.

Tick tock, tick tock. How could time pass so slowly…? Eventually we got on the plane – new, smart, pink and purple colour scheme and Hungarian notices. People had queued at the gate and we were almost last on, but still got a window and a middle. We took off nearly two hours late, and the captain apologised for the delay, saying it had been caused by sending the plane off to Frankfurt for its routine servicing. Thanks, Wizz Air. I passed the time by trying to lose my headache and trying to get a good snap of the interior. Eventually I got one (no flash) but the cabin crew came up to me and demanded my camera so they could delete the photo. I deleted it for them – shame, as it was a good one. I’d never heard of not being allowed to take photos in a plane before.

On arrival at Katowice-Krakow Airport (which turned out to be in neither Katowice nor Krakow, the shuttle bus turned out to be less than was expected. First off, we found out from a Polish speaking fellow passenger that the bus intended to wait for at least an hour until it filled up and the bus next door filled up. Then we found out it would go to Katowice first before going to Krakow, adding at least 30 minutes to the journey. Eventually, the bus got to Krakow at about 0345 and let us out into a deserted car park. This later turned out to be next to the bus station, but that was not obvious in the dark and there was not a sign of a taxi. The driver offered to drive another group to their hotel and then to take us to ours. This was not a long journey, and even though the driver had tried to leave us off at the wrong hotel, we offered him PLN 20. We thought this was generous. But the driver became very aggressive and demanded another 20 zloty. Eventually, I got away with another 10 zloty.

For the return journey, we found the bus easily enough and had an uneventful, if lengthy, journey back to Katowice airport. On arrival at the airport, we found check in closed and nowhere, really, to wait. Still, we waited and eventually got checked in – the boarding pass was just a bit of thermo printed paper roll. Got through security and found ourselves in a dismal space. Like Lutonscum airport, but with only a couple of shops, a sad café and lots and lots of English drunks. There was no semblance of a queue to get on the plane, it was just a scrum.

Last on the plane was a group of particularly loud, obnoxious drunks. One could not stand unaided and had tipp-ex drawings all over his face. He was interviewed by the captain, who was satisfied that he was no danger and he was helped to a vacant middle seat in the row in front of us, where he promptly passed out. His friends in the row in front of him (two in front of us) tried lifting his head, but he was totally out for the count. We took off. Then Mr Tipp-Ex started slumping on his fellow passengers, and we proposed rearranging the seats to have him in a window. With his friends next to him. Fortunately, circumstances seemed to have a sobering effect on his friends, although he himself did get quite agitated when woken for landing. This really makes me wonder just how drunk you have to be to be denied boarding.

Anyway, the queues for immigration at Lutonscum were massive – not helped by the arrival of another plane load and as the queue snaked up that corridor it just got longer the nearer you got to the end of it

This left the connection to the Easyjet flight quite tight, and I had heard from Pam Ann that if you were even seconds late you wouldn’t be allowed to board. But I was confident since I had checked in on line. I presented what I thought to be a boarding pass to the security man, but he said it wasn’t a boarding pass. It looked like one, and had one of those dotty things that go under the scanner. So, I had to sprint back downstairs to the EZ ticket desk. They told me I needed to go to the check in counter with a massively long queue, but fortunately they came with me to squeeze me in to the front of the queue. At check in, they told me initially that they couldn’t do a boarding pass as I had checked in on line, but a look that could kill persuaded them to print one. Then a sprint back upstairs and through security. Half an hour to kill in a (mercifully) deserted departure lounge. Just long enough to get a sandwich at Pretamanger to eat on the plane. And for my sense of panic to die down just a little.

When the gate was called, I went along and was allocated the third queue – people who hadn’t got speedy boarding or checked in on line. But we had to wait over half an hour in line before anyone was allowed to board. There was nowhere to sit, and it was deeply irritating. Then a trip through torrential rain to the plane. Fortunately I had a drizabone and hat, so I could go to the tail end and still not get wet. Others were not so lucky and found themselves queueing to get on at the front! As it happened, even being in the third queue, I had a whole row to myself on the plane. An uneventful flight followed (top tip – on EZ board at the back and always face the front and it doesn’t look quite as orange), and arrived at a rainy Edinburgh. We had to go down the steps and up the airbridge stairs via the tarmac, and that was that.

Now I know that money is tight for many people. I’m not rich myself. But I enjoy travel and I enjoy travelling. I cannot understand why anyone would want to take an experience that should be fun – flying – and turn it into something that is so actively unpleasant. There is no need for all the queues, for rudeness, for people spending more time than they need to in terminals just to please the airlines. There is no need for scrums to get seats on planes. There is no need for airlines to carry drunks. And there is no need for Poland to accept stag and hen parties – Poland’s better than that. I was apprehensive about the prospect of “low cost” travel, and I have to say I’ll never do it again. At best, it was unpleasant. At worst, it was scary.